Dear CONvergence Members:

Tuesday a communication was sent to several Invited Participants informing them of our rule that restricted them from selling merchandise during the convention. It was brought to the Board’s attention that this communication suggested that hotel policy may have been responsible for the restrictions on sales. We regret the error and would like to clarify that the rule was put in place to ensure we comply Minnesota tax law, and that Hotel policy was not the reason for this rule.

To explain further, all of our departments that sell have a procedure in place to ensure compliance with applicable tax law that prevents vendors from selling merchandise without a valid Minnesota Sales Tax ID which includes collecting the required ST-19 tax forms and prevents CONvergence from liability for noncompliance. It was discovered in April this year that the Invited Participants Department had not had this procedure in place and sales had been occurring, thereby putting the convention at risk. Due to the number and varied locations of the IPs, it was felt that the Department did not have the capacity to implement that procedure this year in addition to all the other matters happening. This information was supposed to have been communicated to all Invited Participants in April by the Department with the commitment that we would put a procedure in place for next year. Unfortunately, this did not occur, and we apologize for the inconvenience.

We appreciate the affected IPs making the Board aware of this issue so that we could address it. We have put a mechanism in place that will allow IPs to sell on a limited basis and will continue with putting a full procedure in place for next year.

We look forward to seeing everyone at the convention next week!

Sincerely

The Board of Directors